In 1926, Kerala India, Gladys and Ken finish their honeymoon hiking in Silent Valley. (How silent? Can screams still be heard?)

1926, Gladys Gose Pearce, Kerala India

Dear Diary,

Today we finished up our honeymoon with a trip to Silent Valley, where few white men and fewer women have ever been. There was no road. We had to hike in with our camping necessities carried on coolie’s heads.

NOTE: In this context nearly one hundred years ago, coolie meant laborer. I‘m aware this term is considered insensitive now in many countries. Since this is an excerpt from an actual diary from 1926, to alter it would be to alter historical context. Gladys and Ken simply went by terms they were told to use back then, and in their minds the term simply meant a hired laborer.

I had been looking forward to some needed exercise on this trip. But word had gone ahead that Ken, the Chief Engineer Sahib, was bringing his Memsahib, so when had we arrived at the end of the road to meet the coolies, we found that the Indian Ranger had arranged to have a chair provided to carry me. Two long bamboo poles had been lashed to an office chair and four husky coolies stood by.

“Imagine me in a chair!” I snorted to Ken. “I don’t need or want a chair!”

I, Laurie, must interrupt here to note that Gladys was very athletic –a former swimmer and basketball player, and a physical education teacher (and yes, that was unusual, even in America, in the early 1900s.) She was also a very independent woman, so felt no need to have others carry her.) Now, back to Gladys:

Ken told me, “The coolies are hired and I’ll have to pay for them anyway. We might as well take them, and use the chair for crossing streams. The ranger thought he was being considerate of you.”

The servants and peons we left behind bid us a rather anxious farewell because they thought going into Silent Valley wasn’t such a good idea. Only Freddy our butler accompanied us. Ken’s Shikaris (gun-bearers and trackers) led the way, followed by Ken, me on foot, chair coolies and porter coolies, all strung out single file.

As we climbed the steep trail, the sun grew hotter. Although Ken reduced his usual long stride to that of the rest of the party, I was hot and tired. I glanced back at the chair but pride forbade my mentioning that I no longer felt it to be useless. Ken seemed to have eyes in the back of his head. He called a halt and said casually, “You might as well use the chair.”

Such welcome words! I took my place on the seat. The coolies lifted the chair poles to their shoulders and set off at a steady gate. It was not unalloyed pleasure, however. One coolie seemed a little shorter than the others, so I felt at any time I might slip from the chair and down the precipice at the edge of the path. A shift of coolies made no difference, for the path itself sloped to the outside bank. Thus the coolies on that side were lower than the two on the inside near the bank.

From Laurie: This made me giggle a bit, imagining Gladys hanging on for dear life, when she was supposed to be resting!

A Respite on a Veranda

Once we reached the summit, I was delighted to walk again, then as we next hiked downhill the going was easy. The place where we’d stay that night was a welcome sight: a little square one-room house, perched up on four iron-wood posts. The stairs led to a diminutive serambai veranda where we sat to gaze across the valley. As we rested, Freddy brought us a refreshing drink of fresh green coconut milk.

But then… (creepy crawly warning!)

The next day I made the acquaintance of the most detested denizen of the jungle, the leech. Looking like a small animated rubber band, it crawls like an inchworm up your legs or through the eyelets of your shoes, seeking a spot where the vein lies just under the skin. You do not feel it bite the tiny triangular hole through which is sucks your blood. You’re not aware of its presence until the leech drops off, distended with blood to the size of your little finger, while the hole left behind continues to ooze. For days after, whenever you bathe, the bleeding starts again.

The Indian Forest Guard who accompanied us through the deep jungle carried a little bag of damp salt on the end of stick. Whenever he spied a leech he touched it with the salt so it curled up and dropped, yet while one was being routed, another would crawl on, undetected.

I asked, “Are the leeches always this bad?”

“Oh, no, Madam; in the dry season the ticks come.”